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Hello, how are you? That’s about the extent of what I can say in Swedish with confidence. When greeting someone without saying anything else, it is typical to say Hej Hej ,pronounced Hey, Hey. That’s not so different from the state of Georgia, is it?

For some reason our Swedish lessons have been delayed. I guess the teacher is really busy right now. But she will be coming to our house when we have the lessons, so that will be nice.

So, I have started an online course with Babbel. I got a score of 122 on my first lesson, but I think they just try to make it sound good. I use Google Translate a lot on the web, and translate individual words and phrases that I see. It sure is easier now to move to a country that uses a different language, than it was 30 years ago.

Nearly every time I am on the web, these ads come up that say learn Swedish easy. Yeah, easy for who?…Not me.

I can confidently say Linköping. It is the town we are living in. It is pronounced,
(Lin show ping). There are a few more words I am learning, but don’t have the confidence I am saying it right, yet.

A friend of mine trying to show how much Spanish she knew, in a Spanish speaking country, didn’t know what her hosts were laughing about. She had just said she wears watermelons on her feet. I am sure I will make those boo boos many, many times when I start trying to speak more Swedish.

There are some very strange words in Sweden. Some of the funniest are words that are read and pronounced pretty much like English but mean nothing at all, what we think they mean.

When you ride a train, you might see the sign as your pulling into the station, that says “Slut Stationen”. Well that sounds shocking. But what it means is the “Final Station”, the end of the line.

When in a car, you may see a sign that says, “Fri Fart”. What??? A place that you can fart on Friday? “Fri” means “free”, and “fart “means “off”. We call them exit ramps.

At a lot of stores you see the word, “Tack”. This means “Thanks”.

If you hear someone talking about a “barn”, it’s not those buildings with cows in them in the country, it is “child”. Grandchildren are called “barn barn”. That I learned from a taxi driver. But, I forgot to ask him what a barn as we know it is called.

If you hear someone who you think must be talking about “sex”, don’t worry, it is “six”.

One word that makes me giggle, that I learned in the grocery store tonight was, “jordgeezers”. It’s the word for “strawberries”. See if your kids want any of them with whipped cream.

Something else I learned today was that every number has a new word for it. For 253,125 it is:
*tvåhundrafemtitretusenetthundratjugifem
You’ve got to be kidding! Learn Swedish easily??

But the two most important words, and most loved words of the Swedes, is lagom, and fika. I will write on these later on.